From where I stand

The pain of abortion is evident in this home made video above. The videos made of the interviews with various Planned Parenthood representatives and former employees have gone viral and have stirred up the abortion debate anew in 2015, some 42 years after the US Supreme Court opinion authored by Justice Harry Blackman made abortion legal in all 50 states. Much of the debate focuses on the fetuses (or unborn babies, depending on what side of choice you stand). I want to focus on the women who have had abortions and the women who have helped them.

First, however, I don’t want to make light of the pain a fetus/baby might feel. Those who focus on the aborted fetuses sometimes talk about the pain the the fetuses feel (or do not feel, again, depending on which side of the debate you stand). The counter to the argument that fetuses feel pain, and therefore abortion should not be allowed, is stated well in Fetal Pain Is a Lie: How Phony Science Took over the Abortion Debate, Aug. 7, 2015, Salon.com) Of course, the anti-abortion advocates claim science on their side of the debate as well. (doctorsonfetalpain.com)

There is some consensus if both sides are taken together. The anti-abortion research suggests that pain can be felt at 20 weeks, while the pro-choice advocates suggest that pain cannot be felt until 24 weeks: what we know in terms of the brain and the nervous system in a fetus is that the part of the brain that perceives pain is not connected to the part of the body that receives pain signals until about 26 weeks from the last menstrual period, which is about 24 weeks from conception.” (Fetal Pain is a Lie)

So, let us just say that fetuses can feel no pain until they reach at least 24 weeks of development. That seems to be the science, at least the science on which we can agree.

But, I want to focus on the pain women feel.

Let’s focus on the women who have had abortions and those who have helped them. For them, the deed is done. Their life, or opportunity for life, is over. We can’t help them.

One blogger even takes the position that aborted babies are actually better off, using the force of some general Christian thinking, as the inertia:

Perhaps, some people of faith may find some justification for abortion in the thought that these fetuses (babies) are received into the arms of God, never having to struggle in this dark and painful world, their would-be mothers freed from the difficulties and burdens that a child (or another child) would add to their lives.This view has some supporters, but that view may not ultimately make sense.

But we are forgetting about the women again.

I am a man; what do I know about the experience of having an abortion? Maybe we should stop talking and listen to the stories of women who have been through it:

Post Abortion Syndrome is a real thing with real pain. If the blogger quoted above is correct – that God is waiting to receive all of the aborted babies in His arms – we are focusing on the wrong person’s pain when we talk about abortion. The unborn babies are not the ones in need of rescue and healing; the mothers and the women (and men) who help them, encourage them and sometimes coerce them to get abortions are the people whose pain needs to be addressed and considered.

Even if we are wrong about what happens to the aborted babies, we can’t do anything about them once the deed is done. We can fight to change how people view abortion, but many hundreds of thousands of women (millions!) are already living with the memory of what they have done.

What psychological, spiritual and emotional damage is done to a woman who aborts her baby and others who help them?

If one survives without repercussion, it is with a seared conscience. Those are the “lucky” ones.

The following video provides a glimpse of what it is like to wrestle with the pain of abortion.

A seared conscience may seal the eternal fate of the person who is “so lucky”; but at what cost? What does it profit a man (or a woman) to gain the world and lose her soul?